“Well, more like it fell directly through me. But it was the first time I felt heat! Second time, I got struck by lightning. For a questionable century there, I confess I developed an addiction to getting struck by lightning.”

All I can do is howl, which breaks his face into that boyish, irresistibly charming grin, and very quickly I can’t remember why I’d been feeling low. The lamps he nicked from Victorian London burn lively and fierce as the moon arcs out of the trees. It’s unusually large this evening, a milky round pearl. I don’t know if Hall is affecting the appearance of our environment, making it picture-perfect for maximum holiday cheer. Does it matter? The stirring of pleasant feelings inside me is real.

Before my eyes, Hall scatters trees all over the town square and grows them up to maturity, adorning them with tinsel and jewels, lights that flash Happy Holidays. Hall’s magic has been working seamlessly of late, when he’s using it to execute his own ideas. I’m growing suspicious of magic’s “total inability” to supply me with a luxury car rather than the pickup.

“He gives his harness bells a shake,” Hall murmurs. “To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep of easy wind and downy flake.”

I stare at him. “Is that poetry? Did you come up with it?” I don’t know anything about poetry, but I know that it’s romantic and elegant and whenever I envision myself far in the future as an eighty-year-old, Old Me is surrounded by poems bequeathed from the many brilliant, softhearted lovers to whom I was a muse.

He smiles. “Robert Frost did. Wish I could take credit! You look so impressed with me right now.”

I look at the trees, the lights. He’s an artist in his own way. “I’ve always thought I’d end up with a poet, if I ever got swept off my feet.”

“Hmm,” he says to himself, head bowed. “Bettie Hughes, carried away by a poet. I can see that.”

“Thank you for this.” I gesture to the rink. “I needed some fun.” This man, if he can be called that, is indeed filling me up with the joy he promised to.

Hall’s gaze flares with a bright emotion, open and honest, as he takes in my gratitude. A ring of brown encircles his right pupil, to match his left. I don’t think it was like that yesterday, but the longer I think about it, the foggier yesterday becomes.

We step off the ice and head back up the hill, easy wind and downy flakes swirling behind us in a glitter spill of lights.

*

Chapter Nine

MY MUSCLES ARE sore and aching when we clomp our way back up the hill and into the house, shucking off our skates into a big pile on the snow-soaked rug covering the back porch.

Mom, Kaia, and Grandpa are bustling in the kitchen, clattering plates out of the cabinets to set the dining room table for butternut squash soup, lemon garlic chicken, and risotto. When Grandpa turns to look at us over his shoulder as Hall and I enter the room, something like amazement flits across his lined features. “Smells good in here.”